The Line
by VampedVixen
Summary: Sylar gets the virus and visits the one person who can save him. Mylar.


When Sylar showed up at his apartment, the man was shaking, holding a hand to the wall to keep from falling over. It was the last person Mohinder expected to see when he opened the door, the last person he wanted to see. Nevertheless, there he was, his eyes sunken and his cheeks hollow. "I need help, Mohinder. I wouldn't have come if you weren't my last resort."

Standing in the doorway, Mohinder blocked his entrance and Molly's view of the man. She was peeking around him though, wondering who had brought so much tension into their home. "Go back to bed, Molly," Her adoptive father said before bringing himself to answer the man's plea. "Why should I help you? You're a murder, a monster."

Sylar coughed, his body wracked with the last stage of the virus. "I'm sick. I heard you've cured others." He leaned back against the wall. "All I need is some of your blood, that's the key, isn't it? The way you've been fixing the others. Or you could let me die right here, but that's not really what you want, is it?"

He seemed content to stay there until either Mohinder handed him the cure or he passed away, never to be heard from again. He'd killed countless number of people. Mohinder's own father stood among the death toll of this murder. Yet, no matter how much he wanted to shut the door and walk away from this person who had hurt him too many times in the past, Mohinder couldn't bring himself to do so. "What I want and what I need to do have never really been compatible when you've been involved in the past." He sighed, looking into his crowded apartment and then back out at Sylar, weighing the sides before deciding. "I do this thing for you now and you leave town, is that understood?"

"Perfectly," Sylar answered, his vow seeming sincere. He pushed himself up to his feet again, shuffling into the apartment. As soon as he could find a place to sit down among Mohinder's and Molly's belongings, Sylar plopped down heavily on the couch. "I've got some people I need to visit down south anyway. As soon as I get my powers back, I'll be on my way and out of your hair."

"People you need to visit?"

"This one little girl who can summon windstorms. Sweet little thing, who will be quite useful. There's another that can control magnetism, down in Florida." He ticked off the list on his fingers, between shuddering breaths.

"You plan to kill these people." Mohinder rubbed his forehead, not sure why he was helping this killer. He didn't even sound remorseful, it was just a fact of life to Sylar. Some people lived and some people died. It was just a biological imperative. Survival of the fittest, plain and simple.

"I'm a predator." He closed his eyes, resting and gathering strength. "It's what I do."

Mohinder shook his head, worried over his own sanity. This was madness. Here he was, sorting through his medical supplies in order to save this man, this monster. How many people would die because of what he was about to do? Thank god his father wasn't here to watch this. Mohinder felt enough of his own shame, he didn't need his father's on top of that. "I still don't know why I'm helping you."

"Oh, please," Sylar laughed, his voice raspy and catching on his words. Even though he was practically dying in Mohinder's home, he never let go of that cracked sense of superiority. "You know exactly why you're doing this, why you can't just let me die. No matter what I do to you, no matter how many people I hurt, you'll always care about me."

Mohinder looked up from where he was distilling his own blood. This process was familiar to him, the steps and motions that had saved dozens of people so far. "You really think that, don't you? That you have some kind of power over me."

"Some people just find me irresistible." Sylar smirked, his eyes still closed.

He had to be half-delirious, Mohinder noted, wondering if that was a symptom of the disease he had never seen before. Perhaps this particular strain of the virus had mutated, causing the victim, if Sylar could in fact be called a victim, delusions of grandeur. "Mr. Sylar, the only reason I am helping you is because of the very fact that I am not like you. I detest your inability to give a damn about anyone besides yourself, to kill those who are weaker than you just because you can. I will not be like you."

"You're quite the hero." The way he said it, made it sound like a bad thing, something that made Mohinder deficient. That was the line that had always separated them, the thing that caused the break up of their friendship years earlier. One of them was drawn to the light and the other to the dark. If that hadn't been the case, perhaps they would have still been able to talk with each other these days without so much bad blood between them. Sides had been chosen though, alliances made.

Mohinder grabbed for his arm, driving the needle deep inside and hoping it would hurt Sylar as much as this visit was hurting him. If it hadn't been for this ridiculous virus, Mohinder would have gone on happily, safe from conversations that made every inch of him want to run away and yet kept his feet rooted to this place and this time.

Sylar shot open his eyes, tensing as the needle pushed past his skin and into his vein. "The last time that you touched me like that, you were taking a sample of my spinal fluid." They both remembered that time and the pain Mohinder had caused him. It had been payback before, a small bit of revenge for what Sylar had put him through. It was not revenge this time, but nostalgia for days past. Days when they were traveling the country together, like a pair of old friends and comrades. "Is that it?"

"You'll need a short rest now, before you go traipsing around the city." Mohinder began packing up his supplies, eager to put this behind him. "You can stay here, I suppose. But if you try anything, towards either myself or Molly, superpowers or not, you will wish you were dead."

"I promise not to kill anyone until I leave your apartment, is that good enough?" He laid back down on the couch, unable to keep the tiredness away for much longer. As his eyes closed heavily, Sylar felt someone toss a blanket onto the couch with him. He smiled and fell back into sleepy serial killer dreams, of brains and vivisection, all the things that made him happy.

* * *

Mohinder watched him sleep for a while, wondering what had broken Sylar so much. Something in his past turned him into a killer, something that Mohinder doubted could ever truly be undone. This was the man he was now, someone who could snuff out life with as much care as ordinary people stomped out bugs. That's all the human race was to this man, Mohinder noted sadly as he took a sip of his coffee, bugs that needed to be exterminated.

It would have been easy for the both of them, if this thing, whatever it was that had so throughly broken the man, could be fixed as simply just as Gabriel had restored his timepieces. They could have lived together, shared the same dreams and existed on the same side of the good-and-evil spectrum. Perhaps in another universe or another time that Hiro could create, perhaps then they could have had something to build their lives around.

As it was now, that fate could never be.

He passed one more glance towards Sylar, a friend from the past and an enemy in the present, and then flicked off the living room light. Going into Molly's room, he sat in the chair across from her bed, the one he used whenever she awoke from a nightmare and needed someone to keep her company.

Perhaps she could save Mohinder from this one he couldn't seem to wake up from, this one that had lasted a few years now.

* * *

"That's Mohinder's money," Molly pointed out, as she crept into the living room. Sylar was fit and healthy once again, attempting to leave after taking some cash from Mohinder's wallet. He gave her the scariest look he could muster this early in the morning. She didn't budge.

"I'm just taking what I need to get out of this city." Sylar shoved a couple fifties into his back pocket, wondering why she wasn't hiding under her bed. "That's what he wants."

"You're wrong, Mr. Sylar." Molly climbed onto the couch, watching him as he prepared to leave and shook her head. There was a wisdom inside her, one that made her seem far older than her years. Despite himself, Sylar couldn't help but stop and listen. "He misses you. He won't tell anyone, but I can see it in his eyes. He's been keeping tabs on you, you know, asking me to find out where you are every few months. He says it's to keep me safe, but I know the real reason."

"The real reason?"

"He cares about you, duh." She smiled and the world was bathed in sunlight, even hours before the sunrise that morning. A part of him knew this, had always known this but he hadn't had much evidence of that fact until now, just his own desires and the fact that Mohinder seemed hurt anytime he brought it up. "I don't know why though, to me you'll always be the bogeyman."

That he was and more.

He wanted to stay, to talk to Mohinder about this revelation, to finally shove some proof into that man's face. What good would it do though? They would always be what they were, it was in their nature to be on opposite sides. If he stayed, one of them would be changed forever, brought past the line and into enemy territory. He couldn't fathom himself becoming good and somehow hated the idea of Mohinder becoming corrupt.

With an evil smile, Sylar rose and patted Molly on the head. "Thank you. You've confirmed what I think I already knew." His attention went back to Molly's room, where he heard Mohinder sleeping not so quietly. He would even miss the snoring, that loud insufferable noise, when he left. "Tell Mohinder he won't be hearing from me. And lock the door when I leave, there's too many wolves out there in the world, just waiting to gobble up a sweet little thing like yourself."

With that, Sylar left their world, having been supplied with exactly what he needed to survive.

-End-


End file.
